Digital photography has increased the number of images a typical user stores and manages. There is no longer the need to buy expensive, single use film. There is no longer the need to carefully manage this film both before and after development of the film into costly inconvenient prints. There is also no longer the need to carefully select shots to conserve film or money. Film has essentially become an unlimited resource.
Consequently, a typical user with access to widely available modern image acquisition technologies (e.g., a scanner, a camera, etc.) may store many thousands of images on even more widespread storage technologies (e.g., memory cards, magnetic disks, optical disks, etc.). As many photographers, both amateur and professional, have come to realize, the trick with snapping a few good shots is no longer simply having the right light or the right film. Although the traditional issues of image acquisition still exist, new complications of how to edit and manage the volume of image data accumulating on a typical computer hard drive now burden the typical computer user.
In the past, image collectors would develop, edit, and assemble hard wrought photo/journalistic creations into scrapbooks, photo albums, and other culminations or creative work of this sort. The development of computer applications for editing images and assembling the images have greatly reduced the effort needed to create a modern masterpiece out of a few pictures. However, the field of existing image management applications is still in its infancy. These applications suffer from lack of usability and may require users a high degree of technical knowledge and/or creative talent to produce a quality result or even any result. The existing applications may further limit a user's ability to customize their creations.
Thus, there is a need in the art to assist users in managing the volumes of their image data. There is also a need to allow users to edit and organize the image data into quality forms of expression. There is further a need to allow users additional means to custom tailor their creative works involving image data.